


Come on and let me in

by embarrassing old stuff from LJ pre-2015 (prevaricator)



Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mentions of War, strange characterizations, unedited, weird roving POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/embarrassing%20old%20stuff%20from%20LJ%20pre-2015
Summary: Fantasy AU. Nobody's really sure why Shige lives in a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a writing exercise than anything. I'm posting it mostly to keep myself from spending more time on it, because I've got a million more important things to do. Title from that Sunny Hill song about grasshoppers.

Title: Come on and let me in  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: Shige/Tegoshi, Koyama+Shige and Massu+Shige friendship  
Warnings: AU, weird roving POV, mentions of war, unedited, strange characterizations  
Word Count: 1521  
Summary: Fantasy AU. Nobody's really sure why Shige lives in a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere.  
Note: This is more of a writing exercise than anything. I'm posting it mostly to keep myself from spending more time on it, because I've got a million more important things to do. Title from that Sunny Hill song about grasshoppers.

Massu trundles down the path to Shige’s place as fast as he can without running. There are lots of bugs and bothersome animals in the woods, but Shige’s waterproofing spells raise Massu’s profit margins by quite a lot. And somebody has to bring Shige meat and flour and sugar, or he’ll starve to death. He’s stopped going to town lately, and his kitchen garden isn’t really good enough for sustenance.

Massu isn’t sure why Shige can’t just magic himself food, but Massu also doesn’t really understand magic.

Or Shige, he thinks, finally reaching the tiny clearing by the stream just before noon. Living a three-hour walk from the nearest town out of personal preference doesn’t make much sense to Massu. It’s inconvenient and a little scary; what if Shige gets attacked by a bear on the way to the privy and there’s nobody around to hear him scream?

Shige is always waiting by the door to his cabin when Massu gets there, using some magic trick that lets him know when people are coming. Once Massu had joked to Koyama that it was like Shige was reassuring them that they weren’t about to go inside and find a half-eaten corpse, but Koyama had just given him a funny look.

The other reason to brave the bugs and the bears to get here, Massu thinks as he plows through lunch, is Shige’s cooking. But Shige is uncharacteristically quiet while they eat, not filling the air with the usual babble about the spell to keep clothes warm he’s been determined to work out for years. The silence is disconcerting—he’s used to it when Shige’s working, not so much at a meal—but Massu doesn’t know what to make of it.

As soon as his mouth runs out of things to be full of, Massu settles with a dress he brought to work on while he keeps Shige company for a couple hours. He complains about the boring orders he’s been getting lately while they work, receiving sympathetic grunts from Shige in response.

Most of Shige’s customers stick around for as long as it takes him to do the job, but Massu leaves long before supper. He’d rather make a second trip next week to pick up the cloaks he’d brought for waterproofing than have to spend the night here, even if he does really like Shige.

 

 

 

The trail to Shige’s cabin in the woods is narrow and overgrown. Side-effect of the bastard being a slowpoke and only accepting one customer at a time, and no horses allowed. It’s lucky for him he’s so damn good at what he does, or he’d never get any business, Koyama thinks as he trips over another weed.

Shige is waiting for him with a big, happy grin when he gets there, and Koyama feels briefly guilty for his uncharitable thoughts. He passes Shige the bag full of spent charms (mostly bedbug and louse repellants) along with the bag of groceries Shige had asked him to bring last time.

Over lunch he relays selected gossip from the inn, filling Shige in on all the fun he’s missing out on, living as a hermit. But Shige’s smiles are fewer and farther between than they were the last time Koyama visited, and it’s starting to worry him.

Koyama does the washing up while Shige gets to work on the charms. He keeps chattering as he scrubs, surprised when Shige doesn’t tell him to shut up so he can focus. Halfway through recounting the story of the guy with the pet pig from the Capital, he turns and finds Shige staring blankly at the table, not even focused on the charm in front of him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Shige blinks and sits straighter in his chair. “Yeah, sorry. You were saying?”

Frowning, Koyama goes back to his story while he finishes the dishes, then takes a seat at the table across from Shige and watches him work, still chatting.

Shige’s not a good conversationalist when he’s busy, but Koyama keeps talking because otherwise the sound of the clock ticking in otherwise dead silence drives him insane. He’d tried to stay out here for a month, once, after Shige’s old master had died, to keep Shige company. But the silence and that ticking clock would keep him awake, and after two weeks he was starving for human interaction. Tired of Koyama’s obvious restlessness, Shige had practically chased him out of the house.

Koyama catches him staring into space a few more times, but he leaves off demanding to know what’s wrong until Shige puts away his work for the day.

Shige hesitates. “How’s the war going?”

The war. “I thought you didn’t want to know about the war?”

Flinching, Shige shakes his head and says, “I do and I don’t.”

A long time ago, Koyama asked why Shige didn’t just scry this stuff, since he was a mage and all. Shige had grumbled that he wasn’t that kind of mage.

“They’re saying it’ll be over soon,” Koyama says. “We’ve won, we’re just waiting for a surrender.”

Shige just sighs and stares at the table. He’s both worried and wallowing in misery, and Koyama’s not sure why.

“Hey, why don’t you come to town with me tomorrow? Business is slow right now, my mom can spare a bed for a while. And you could use the change of scenery.”

When Shige was an apprentice, he’d visited all the time, but once he’d taken over for his late master, his visits became rarer. He hasn’t visited at all in over a year and a half, so Koyama is surprised when he says yes.

 

 

 

Tegoshi doesn’t usually bother with checking at the inn in town to see if Shige’s already at his customer limit, when he visits. There’s always room to be made. He also brings his horse, because he and Skull don’t like to be separated for as long as it takes for Shige to touch up Tegoshi’s weaponry spells. When Shige complains, Tegoshi just says he’s helping to keep the trail to Shige’s house from disappearing entirely.

This time it’s been close to two years since his last visit, and stopping at the inn would be too frustrating after he rode all night to get here.

The trail is rough but still there, and Shige is standing by the door like always as Tegoshi arrives, cabin looking no more or less mossy than he remembers it. He points at the trail. “It didn’t disappear.”

But the smile he gives Tegoshi is too tentative to be a smirk. A familiar twinge of guilt twists in Tegoshi’s stomach as he swings down from Skull, even if it’s not his own fault that the war wouldn’t end. He ties Skull to a tree, more because Skull likes to trample all over Shige’s kitchen garden than out of any fear that Skull will run away.

He tosses Shige a mock-suspicious face as he approaches. “Have you been cheating on Skull with another horse?”

Shige grimaces. “Fortunately, no. I’ve actually been able to feed myself from my own garden, the past couple years.”

“You missed me,” Tegoshi says.

Inside, he piles weapons and armor on the floor for Shige to look after, feeling a little naked without them. Shige ignores them for the time being, feeding Tegoshi lunch instead and then spelling up some hot water for him for a bath outside. It’s one of the more frivolous uses of magic Tegoshi’s seen, but it beats waiting for water to heat the normal way.

Stripping, he slides into the water, letting the heat soothe his muscles for a long while before he starts scrubbing. Shige slips out with a stool in one hand and a helm in the other and sits poring over the helm while Tegoshi bathes.

Later they go back in, Tegoshi curling up on a chair in borrowed clothes. He wonders briefly if Shige ever loans his clothes out to his other visitors.

It seems to take Shige longer to update the spells every time Tegoshi visits, despite Shige’s complaints about Tegoshi’s disregard for his rules and his own distaste for weaponry. Tegoshi doesn’t mind. The calm silence and the steadily ticking clock aren’t his usual scene, but he craves it sometimes. Being around people is fun but exhausting.

So he’s happy to read in silence until it gets too dark, whereupon he gets up and takes the helm from Shige’s hands, setting it aside and sneaking into Shige’s lap in its stead. Shige puts an arm around him to steady him, but his hand hits the healing wound on Tegoshi’s hip.

The sudden pain brings back the memory of the harsh stab when it happened, the wide eyes of the perpetrator as Tegoshi gave far better than he’d gotten. It wasn’t his first kill by far, and now it hits him just how much is different from the last time he was here.

He stares at Shige, wondering if he knows. But Shige just sighs and gives Tegoshi the kiss he’d been planning to steal, moving his hand carefully higher on Tegoshi’s back.  


The end? Comments are loved, concrit is appreciated.


End file.
